Why are you a Democrat?

[H2O Man]

51. Recommended.

That's a good question that you pose in the OP, and makes for an interesting discussion. So thank you for that.

I was raised in a household that was firmly in the Democratic Party. My father's family were New Deal democrats. And union activists.

My mother's father had been a socialist and radical union organizer. He was also a WW2 hero, and had been on the cover of the US Marine's handbook. By the time I was born, he had joined the Democratic Party.

As a young teenager, I became close friends with Rubin "Hurricane" Carter. Boxing has always been the sport with the closest relationship to politics; Carter had been friends with bothMalcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. So discussing politics and social issues with Rubin was heady stuff for me, and opened my young eyes to different ways of viewing "the system" in America.

Through my maternal grandmother's extended family -- which included Onondaga Chief Paul Waterman -- I would be exposed to yet other ways to think.

So, while I've been a registered democrat for many, many years, I would say it is because of the general values system that I associate with the people I get along with the best, on the grass-root's level, as well as the contributions of the great people at the national level. Yet, the "Democratic Party" isn't my identity, as such, in things political. It's a suit that I wear while working towards the greater goal of social justice. It does not prevent me from being friends with, or working with, people from any other party identification (or independents).